


in the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet, for just a moment

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: ipsa scientia potestas est [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: A Blacker Shade Of Moiraillegiance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternia is Terrible, Ancestor-Era (Homestuck), Canon-Typical Violence, Existential Crisis, F/F, F/M, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Sorta Divergent Anyway, Tragedy/Comedy, okay mostly tragedy after a while, substance use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-06 11:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12816126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: Your name is Latula Pyrope, although nearly every troll outside of your quadrants refers to you as Neophyte Redglare out of respect.Presently, you are a legislacerator in training. You perform your duty and enforce the letter of the law to the best of your ability, all while trying to balance your studies with your relationships. However, you have always been analytical to a fault. You have always seen what most others either fail or choose not to, watching quietly, making silent observations and comparing them to your vague ideas of what justice is, so much so that sometimes even you close your eyes to what you believe to be just and legitimate. Keep your eyes open constantly, and they start to sting.More often than you care to admit, you wonder if these traits of yours are assets or flaws.And the time when you will have to choose between adhering to the law or to your sense of integrity is coming sooner than you think.





	1. let me be no nearer

**Author's Note:**

> ok strap in guys 'cause this is going to be one hell of a ride. i am playing about as fast and loose with canon as i always do, with a side of modifying timelines a bit. some of you may be asking me why i am working on yet another WIP when i have about 300 of them, and to that, i answer, 1. i have the attention span of a goldfish, and 2. this one is actually >2/3rds of the way finished, minus some proofreading and consistency edits. that's right. no 18-month waits in between chapters this time. Updates should be coming every three to four days to give me time to actually finish the fic. Depending on how quickly I finish the whole thing, I might update even faster. Might.
> 
> In all seriousness, this has probably been one of my favorite fics I've worked on in recent memory, and I hope you enjoy reading it just as much I've enjoyed writing it. Rating may and probably will go up.
> 
> Oh yeah. Fic title taken from some lyrics to [Hurricane](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZfzuJ8oVpE), from the Hamliton soundtrack. Chapter titles taken from various parts of T.S. Eliot's "[The Hollow Men](https://msu.edu/~jungahre/transmedia/the-hollow-men.html)".

Your communicator goes off at some point in the early afternoon, otherwise known as the time where you should be, and were, fast asleep. With much effort, you dig yourself out of your recuperacoon.

If it’s one of your cohorts asking you if you’ve written up an analysis for the case you last covered in class - in which a member of the Imperial Army culled everyone in her quadrants for no reason other than one troll’s infidelity - you’ll personally disembowel whoever decided to contact you to ask if they can copy your work, and you’ll do it on the front steps of the Academy, no less.  
  
You have no patience for such flagrant laziness, nor do you have patience for being rudely awoken when you fail to get much sleep to start with.  
  
Your name is Latula Pyrope, you are nineteen and some perigees sweeps of age, and you are a student at the Academy of Law as neophyte legislacerator. Therefore, whichever waste of oxygen who has decided to shoot your sleep to shit can wait until you use the load gaper, and wash the sopor off yourself, before receiving your two-word reply of “Fuck No.”  
  
You put on your red-tinted glasses, brew yourself a cup of caffeinated swill, and only then consider the idea of answering your comm.

You hope it's not Genubi, because then you will feel somewhat obligated to help.  
  
“I up and fuckin’ know Latula Pyrope ain’t got the globes to the wall motherfucking audacity to ignore my communications like she thinks she’s the fucking Empress herself,” comes the voice from the speaker.  
  
Oh great. Just great. Of all the trolls on Alternia, it had to be this asshole. If he’s calling you by your hatchling name, he cannot be too displeased with you. But if he’s calling you this early, he must surely be displeased about something.  
  
So fuck you with a bulge the circumference of your upper arm, and not even in a pleasant way.  
  
“Good afternoon, Grand Highblood,” you respond, really hoping he’s not going to send some drones after you for shits and giggles. He did that once for one of your wriggling days. Yes, they had been programmed not to injure, and were full of red licorice once you defeated them, but that isn’t the point. The point is you were scared out of your thinkpan, even though, admittedly, it was pretty funny afterwards. “To what do I owe the privilege of your correspondence?”  
  
“Meet me at my hive in a motherfucking hour, and I’ll explain, and also consider sparing your life despite your disrespect,” he says. “And when I say a motherfucking hour, I mean one motherfucking hour or less. I’m timing you.”  
  
This hive in question is located in a veritable fortress where said troll and all the adherents of his weird cult reside. Also known as subjugglator headquarters.

Every time you to go there, you cannot help but ask yourself how badly you pissed off the Mother in your last life, that you’re being made to lead this one.  
  
And he’s timing you. Of course he is.  
  
That’s Kurloz Makara for you. If he hadn’t saved your life that one time, you would have cold-cocked him and gotten culled for it long ago. He treats you as a frequent confidante, asking you for advice, even though you are nineteen and he is about two hundred and seventy-nine. You haven’t the foggiest clue why, nor do you want to think about it too hard.  
  
He says it’s because you’re the most intelligent troll he’s met in a century. You know it’s something else. The quad that dare not speak its name.  
  
Still, if he wants a one-off pale fling with someone who is not you, you’d gladly hire him a hooker for that purpose. Shit, you’d even front your own hard-earned caegars for it. That said, if you ever developed the temerity to punch him, you might just live to tell the tale. Knowing him, he’d probably think it was the greatest joke on Alternia.  
  
He’s unhinged even by subjugglator standards, although he’s not nearly as unhinged as most give him credit for, or for the reasons they think he’s unhinged. You have a preternatural knack for reading trolls, and the Grand Highblood is no exception.  
  
Underneath about twelve surface layers of absolute insanity, he’s almost as thoughtful and methodical as you are. Therefore, he has your respect, rather than your fear. You’re almost certain he knows this.  
  
You put on your uniform, comb your hair, and take a glance out the window. It’s the middle of the dim season on this part of Alternia, so yeah, you can make this journey from your hive without being fried to a crisp, or blinded even worse than you already have been. Still, your blood is cool enough that being outside for too long before nightfall is rather uncomfortable.  
  
You take your modded skateboard out of your sylladex, and make for the area where the aura of chucklevoodoos hangs in the air like smog. Nobody in their right mind is outside at the moment, so you make excellent time.  
  
Upon reaching the front doors of this cursed place, the two sentries posted stare at you like you have to be lost.  
  
“What’s your fucking business here, shitblood?” the shorter one asks as if he’s never seen you here before. You think he is obligated to give you a hard way to go a required number of times every perigee, and if he fails to meet his quota, Kurloz makes him swab every inch of the castle.  
  
“I have an appointment with the Grand Highblood, who requested that I come here not one hour ago,” you reply, taking our your comm, your tone dripping with its typical contempt. “I can even play back the message in question, should you desire to confirm the veracity of my claim, subjugglator.”  
  
“She’s clear,” the other one says. “Register your weapons, and go inside.”  
  
You barely stop yourself from throwing your claws up in confusion.  
  
“Weapons?”  
  
The subjugglator points to your cane.  
  
Oh, for the love of the Mother. You hate these two.

Maybe you can convince Kurloz to send them on a mission to Vostos 9 or something. Then you could pay someone on that crew to punt them both out of the airlock.

You wouldn't, but it's a nice thought.  
  
You hand the cane over, and enter the fortress of pain, letting your fingertips skim the walls so you can find your way.

You smell blood on the air, overpowering and fresh. Someone must have been recently beaten up, down, and sideways, probably fatally.  
  
You step on an ill-placed horn, and startle the shit out of yourself.  
  
What the fuck.  
  
Another troll shouts the standard greeting of “Whoop! Whoop!” as you pass, and their voice echoes through the hallway. You sigh. The things you do for certain trolls.  
  
Upon reaching the throne chamber, and drawing close enough to barely make out the figure of the Grand Highblood, you fall to one knee out of respect for his status. You don’t give a shit, and he doesn’t give a shit, but formalities are formalities.  
  
“Rise, legislacerator,” he says, even though you’re not quite a legislacerator yet. Still a neophyte. He turns to address his guard. “Close the motherfucking door and get out of here, got it?”  
  
Aforementioned guard scurries off to do Kurloz’s bidding. Once you two are alone, Kurloz gets off his throne, stretches, and sighs. He seems wound up, exceedingly, maybe dangerously so. Before you can think better of it, you pap this fool until his stance relaxes.  
  
“Of all the fuckin--” he starts out. You shoosh him, and pap him again for good measure.  
  
“So what’s going on?” you ask, once you judge him to be calm enough to engage in what passes as civil conversation between the two of you. “Do you even know what time it is?”  
  
He may not, come to think of it, considering the fact that it is always dark in this chamber.  
  
“You will not believe the fuckin’ last few nights I just had, Redglare,” he tells you.  
  
You snort, ready to be concerned, or at least mildly amused.  
  
“How many fatalities?”  
  
“Too fucking many, and there’ll be even more ‘fore I’m even fucking done.”  
  
Well, this certainly sounds interesting. You rub your gloved hands together in anticipation.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
He takes a long drink from his ceremonial goblet of Faygo, offering you some, which you politely decline. If you’re going to get intoxicated, you’ll do it in the safety of your own hive, and not surrounded by all these painted cultists. Besides, you don’t want any his weird clown backwash. For the love of all that could be considered even vaguely holy, he uses blood as fingerpaint and eats with his hands. You don’t know where his mouth has been, or what’s been in his mouth.  
  
Actually, you could hazard a guess on both fronts. Therefore, no clown backwash for you.  
  
“Ok, so, remember how I said my forces were real fucking close to capturing some heretics of the first degree?”  
  
You nod.  
  
“The signless mutant and his companions, yes.”  
  
“Well, we got ‘em,” he says. “All four. Finally. They were holed up in the jadeblood temple. You know, the shrine to the First Mother, or whatever.”  
  
“So your operation was a success, then?”  
  
“The word you’re up an’ looking for is clusterfuck.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“I gave exacting, fucking specific motherfucking instructions that nobody but the four heretics be harmed, _and that even those fucking blasphemers be taken alive!_ ”  
  
The furniture rattles from the volume of his shouting.

You pap him again until he continues ranting more quietly.  
  
That’s surprising, you reflect. Not that the furniture is rattling, no, that’s pretty standard when he gets going. But generally, his M.O. is to cull first and ask questions later, especially with trolls he deems to be heretical in any way. Your shock must show on your face, because he's quick to explain why he didn’t.  
  
“There were auxiliatrices there that were on pilgrimage to the temple,” he says, scowling.

Oh. His relative pacifism makes sense, then. Killing an auxiliatrix, a steward of the caverns tasked with caring for grubs, is not something to be done lightly, or ever, unless the auxiliatrix strikes first, with provably lethal intent, and is not doing so in order to protect herself, troll grubs, mother grubs, or other auxiliatrices, at least as far as you can remember from lessons.  
  
Kurloz goes on. “Anyway, they formed a barricade to stop my fuckin’ forces and buy the heretics time to run. My trolls culled ‘em where they stood. They sure as shit ain’t standing no more.”  
  
Technically, since the auxiliatrices were obstructing justice, a case could be made that incapacitating them was a legitimate and perfectly legal move, but… culling? That could not hold up without a bribe of gold the size of the fucking moon, blackmailing at least four hundred trolls, or unless everyone decided to show up to court high on soporifics that evening.  
  
“But your group didn’t cull the heretics,” you say, by way of clarifying the situation.  
  
Only subjugglators could get something this ass backwards, present company excluded. Cull the auxiliatrices, but incapacitate those guilty of treason against the Empire. You say exactly this to Kurloz, he gets worked up yet again, and you have to shoosh him for a while before he's coherent again.  
  
“Nope, didn’t kill the treasonous fucks. They’re in holding downstairs,” he says, as if he’d like to break something. A lot of something. “However, we got ten dead auxiliatrices, on their own temple grounds, no fucking less.”

Here, he pauses to drink more wicked elixir, looking discomfited.  
  
To your understanding, the Cult of the First Mother and the Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs are diametrically opposed, but they tolerate each other, one group dedicated to bringing about life, and the other dedicated to ending it. Balance, you think. Balance.  
  
“The lowbloods are up in arms, and I don’t think I gotta tell you that there’re more of ‘em than they are of us. I fucking told my subjugglators not to kill the jadebloods. _I told them!_ I knew that anything happening to them would cause some kinda epic fucking shitshow, especially since that mutant’s been running around spouting fucking blasphemies about the hemospectrum for the longest time. _However, some motherfuckers just ain’t know how to up an’ listen when I speak!_ ”

You extend your papping hand again.

“Indeed.”  
  
Kurloz puts down his Faygo, picks something else up, an object you hadn’t noticed initially, and shows it to you.

It’s severed head of a troll, which smells oddly like grape juice. Their face has been marked with the ceremonial white paint that all subjugglators wear. By the smell alone, they evidently have not been dead for very long. You’d do more than raise an eyebrow, but you know better than most what happens to Kurloz’s subordinates when they fail him.

Shit, even you would have decapitated the troll if all is as he says.  
  
“Therefore, I culled every last one of ‘em when they got back,” Kurloz says. “Fuckin’ idiots had it coming, may they rot for all eternity without ever reaching the shores of Shangri-La. They’re not even worthy to be used as motherfucking paint.”  
  
Well, damn. That’s low.  
  
“So what do you plan to do now, then?” you ask. “And what does this have to do with me, Grand Highblood?”  
  
You’re hoping he only needed someone to vent to. You can’t imagine being needed for anything else.  
  
“Had my forces not fucked everything up to the absolute center of motherfucking Alternia, _I could just_ _cull these four motherfuckers on my own time_ , _in the manner of my choosing_ ,” he says. “But, if I do that, and you fuckin’ add that to the dead auxiliatrices, we could have a serious lowblood uprising on our hands, in which case the Empress will personally flay me alive, since she already ain’t too pleased with me, assuming the fucking shitbloods don’t cull me first, seeing as I’m the one s’posed to be in charge here.”  
  
You have never been more glad in your short life to not be Kurloz Makara.  
  
“I see.”  
  
“Therefore, I gotta give these heretical fucks a trial,” he says. “Not just any trial. An old style trial. Orders from the Empress herself.”  
  
You tilt your head to one side.

You think you understand what he’s saying, you just can’t believe it.  
  
“Old style?”  
  
“Like how the legislacerators used to do back when the last empress was alive and kicking.” He would know, if he’s actually as old as records say he is. “With a prosecution, _and_ a defense. Then, when the shitbloods are found guilty, public execution. Sort of.”  
  
“Sort of?”  
  
“The jadeblood heretic, she’s gonna get sentenced to a hundred sweeps of slavery. Auxiliatrices are made to serve, after all,” he says with a chuckle. “The goldblood’s gonna replace whatever fucking battery the Empress is currently using on her personal ship until which point she manages to burn his skinny ass out. I give him ten sweeps max. Fifteen if he’s real fuckin’ unlucky. Meanwhile, shitblood prophet’s shitblood matesprit? She’s a feisty one, so death by arena combat’s probably how that’s gonna fuckin’ go. I can’t fuckin' wait to see that match. And as for the mutant? The motherfucking blazing irons themselves. Just what that heretic has earned.”  
  
You nod, but Kurloz still has not answered your question.  
  
“You have yet to articulate where exactly I factor into all of this.”  
  
“I just up an’ fuckin’ told you we need the fuckin’ appearance of a defense, y’know, to appease the shitblood masses, hopefully,” he says. “That’s where the fuck your teal ass comes in. So work your legislacerator miracles. Make it look as legit as possible. I know I can trust you to do the right fuckin' thing. You haven't failed me yet.”  
  
You don’t mind being saddled with this task as much as you should.

Someone has to do it, and it might as well be someone competent. If things head south with the lowbloods, you’re not exactly one of them. While you won’t be the first troll to go in the event of a revolt, you doubt you’ll be spared entirely.  
  
Also, while you’d never admit this to anyone, you don’t want to see Kurloz land in any hot water for reasons that were actually beyond his control for once. He annoys you probably more than any troll on Alternia, but you feel something of a kinship for him. He’s a genocidal fuck who revels in meting out sadistic punishment on those who fuck up his shit (which covers a wide array of offenses), but…  
  
He could have let you burn to death in the sunlight all those sweeps ago. He didn’t have to save you. And he’s the closest thing to a moirail you’ve ever had. You’re almost certain he feels the same. You are ‘rails in all but name, and ‘rails bail each other out of difficult situations.  
  
You then put aside your sentimentality, and reflect that you wish you’d known that all this political intrigue was why you were unceremoniously roused at fuck no o’clock in the first place. You might have spiked your coffee with spirits. A lot of spirits. It would have been coffee flavored liquor by the time you were done spiking it.  
  
“Very well, Grand Highblood. I accept this honor of an assignment,” you say, with an eye-roll that makes him laugh. “I presume that this is the point at which I may take my leave?”  
  
“That would be a correct fucking assessment of the shit, sister. Get outta here ‘fore my guard thinks you’ve tried to assassinate me, as if you even could,” he says. “And Redglare?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“If you up an’ play your part properly, I’ll see to it that you are recommended to become a full legislacerator after the executions are over. No more of that neophyte shit.”  
  
You nod, grinning inwardly.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
The opportunity of a lifetime has been thrown into your lap, and if you are anything, you are an opportunist.  
  
Certainly, you deserve this much. Yes, you might be one of the youngest trolls in the Academy, but your marks and conduct have been exemplary, far above that of your cohorts. You were made to be a legislacerator.  
  
Still, something needles at you. You contemplate that severed head he showed you.  
  
“One question. If I, to use your parlance, fuck this up royally, what happens to me?” you ask.  
  
Kurloz chuckles again, but there isn’t an ounce of mirth in it.  
  
“If you fuck it up, well, I ain’t got nearly enough teal paint on my walls.”  
  
Your eyes widen. Kurloz sighs.  
  
“That was a joke. Sorry you ain’t laughing."

Oh yeah, what a great joke. You could just laugh yourself straight into an early grave. You tell him exactly this.

All of a sudden his expression grows contemplative, even sad.

"Latula, you know I probably couldn't cull you, even if I was ordered to."

You're touched, but you scowl anyway. You have a reputation to uphold.

"I truly despise you sometimes."  
  
“Comes with the territory, my righteous sister,” he says. “But to actually up an' answer your question, if you fuck this up, if anyone fucks anything up, the Empress’ll probably cull us all personally. No pressure or nothin.”  
  
High stakes and high rewards, with absolutely no room for failure. Just the sort of games at which you excel.  
  
“Is there anything else I should know?” you ask him.  
  
“Nah. Can't get my think on about nothin' else important," he says. "So return to your hive, get your sleep on - you look like you need it - and come back here few hours after dusk. You gotta interview your motherfucking clients at some point.”

You're both keyed-up and exhausted, a bad combination on a good day. This is not a good day. So you nod, silently. It's all you really can do at the moment.  
  
“Yes, Grand Highblood.”  
  
You then proceed to get your ass out of that place as fast as your legs and skateboard will carry you, only slowing down when you’re about a quarter-mile away from your hive.

You’d tell your matesprit and kismesis about this, but they don’t need to know just yet.

Not until you figure out your next move. Not until you really know what you've gotten into, and you won't even begin to know that until later.

Yes, they'll panic either way - they have every right to - but if you have a concrete plan of action other than hope really hard that you don't die, you might be able to convince them to panic less.

You don't want them to think that you have bitten off more than you can chew.

As you float in your recuperacoon, eyes beginning to close, you pray that you haven't.


	2. here the stone images are raised

After receiving your orders for the evening, Kurloz warning you to watch your skinny ass - as if you didn’t know to do that already - you make your way to the basement of the subjugglator fortress, where the prisoner holding cells are.

This time, the sentries have refrained from confiscating your cane, likely because the trolls with their heads up their nooks are not on duty tonight. Or Kurloz told them you might need your primary weapon. Either way.

You don’t think you will, because all the trolls in the holding cells have been mildly sedated. You're familiar with the protocol, even if you have never had the opportunity to test it first hand.

The troll at the entrance to the holding area asks for your identification, and you quickly provide it.

“For classified reasons, I need the keycards necessary for entering the cells of the following trolls,” you tell them. You check your notes, rattle off the names of the appropriate prisoners, and show the troll the document upon which the Grand Highblood’s seal of approval has been stamped.

“That’ll be…” The guard goes through the rows of keys, before removing four. “Cards 4, 1, 3, and 11. That all?”

“Yes,” you reply. “Thank you.”

The guard hands the cards to you, and you slip them onto the belt of your uniform.

You decide that you might as well go in numerical order in terms of these interviews, starting with the cell labeled “1”, that of Elder Auxiliatrix Porrim Maryam, aged thirty-five sweeps.

Once you unlock and enter it, you’re surprised to note how clean it is.

There’s a recuperacoon in one corner, and a load gaper in another corner, but the place smells spotless, free of even a speck of dust.

The light coming from the bare bulb on the ceiling is enough for you to be able to make out a female troll, clad in a standard-issue gray tunic. She sits against the base of the recuperacoon, her chin on her knees, gazing out into space, as far as you can tell.

You close the door behind you, and listen for any untoward movements, making sure your cane is where you can reach it easily.

“Auxiliatrix Porrim Maryam?” you ask.

She glances at you.

“Yes?”

You strain your eyes to near their limit to see her properly.

She has a nasty, fuck-ugly, poorly stitched-up gash at the side of her head, one that makes you wince just to witness it.

You feel uncomfortable standing over her, especially since she was once an elder auxiliatrix, so you sit down, cross legged, on the floor in front of her.

“I am Neophyte Redglare,” you tell her.

Technically that isn’t who you are completely, but the idea of giving her your hatchling name makes you uncomfortable.

It occurs to her that you may have overseen the mother grub who hatched you in particular - she's certainly old enough for that.

You put the thought from your mind.

For her part, Auxiliatrix Porrim says nothing, her expression seeming oddly blank.

The parts of her body that have not been concealed by the tunic are covered in bruises. You know she’s guilty of treason, but surely all that force shouldn’t have been necessary to take her into custody, or to maintain it. She’s been sedated. She should have been compliant once the sedation took effect, Mother willing.

Otherwise she might burst into luminescent rainbow drinker glow, in which case you would be utterly fucked.

But if she hasn’t yet, she probably won’t, you assure yourself.

Still, why all the injury against her?

And more chillingly, some of those bruises look younger than four nights old, suggesting that they may have been sustained even after she was brought here.

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

Kurloz is going to owe you big time for what you’re doing.

You are going to extort out of Kurloz Makara enough caegars to build a fucking castle, from the ground up, in the middle of absolute nowhere, where nobody can compel you to be anywhere you do not wish to be.

Yet, as you try to conceal your mild disquiet, the prisoner sits calmly, doing nothing but watching you watch her.

“Right, so,” You try to think of something intelligent to say. “In a few days, you will be tried for the crime of treason against the Empire, along with sedition, failure to cull a mutant grub, assault of multiple members of the Imperial Army, and resisting arrest. Before that point in time, you will need to enter a plea of either guilty or not guilty with regards to these charges.”

She says nothing for a few minutes.

“What are you doing here, exactly?” she asks, in a light, almost conversational tone. Oh, so she speaks besides to respond to questions.

Go figure.

And as if you’re not asking yourself that same question. What _are_ you doing here?

_(Paying a debt? Getting a leg up? What does it matter except in results?)_

“I have been given the task of representing and defending you during your trial. To that end, I will need to collect statements from you with regards to your charges.”

“I was unaware that the legal system allowed for official defense of the accused,” Porrim says.

“Usually it doesn’t,” you admit. “This is a special circumstance, however.”

“That, or a publicity stunt.”

“Pardon?”

“The enforcers of your system killed ten innocent shrine priestesses, stewards dedicated to the service of the First Mother," Auxiliatrix Porrim says, with particular vehemence, her eyes boring holes into you. "Many of these details have almost certainly gotten out, as they always do, despite attempted suppression of the facts. Therefore, my companions and I are being given a modified form of an official trial that appears to work in our favor, in an attempt to appease trolls that will more than likely be out for violent revenge."

She pauses before adding, "Correct me if I am wrong.”

In that moment, you see a flash of the troll she must have been before her capture: perceptive, assertive, articulate, and blunt.

In another life, you might have respected her.

Here, now, you wrinkle your nose and frown.

You don’t have time to play mind games with this woman.

Maybe a hundred sweeps of servitude will make her less rankling to your sensibilities.

“I need you to enter a plea for all the charges of which you’ve been accused, so that I may construct my defense,” you say, ignoring all her (mostly valid) speculation. “And, believe what you want regarding what happened to the jadebloods in that shrine, but if you and your group had left the temple when the request was made, and had the auxiliatrices dispersed when ordered to, perhaps there would have been no need to kill them in the first place.”

Auxiliatrix Porrim lets out a breath of evident distress. Good. You’ve touched a nerve. Maybe now, you can get on with what you have to do.

_(Did you need to be so cruel, Latula? Was that necessary?_

_You shove that thought away.)_

The auxiliatrix clears her throat.

“Believe whatever you want so you can sleep without guilt, wiggler,” she says. “But you are nothing more than a tool of the Empire. I think you know what happens to tools if and when they ever become defective. And with you being nearly blind, no less.”

Oh. She's decided to make it personal.

You can reckon with personal, you think, hand tightening on your cane.

“Is that a threat, auxiliatrix?” you want to know.

“Oh, no. Not in the least. I am not the threat,” she replies. “At any rate, I plead guilty to the charges that have been leveled against me. Now, you can prepare whatever defense you desire, and leave me in peace.”

You had no idea this dialogue would be so akin to pulling teeth.

Nonetheless, she has left you with a clear way forward, one you intend to take.

“Very well. If that is your final word.”

"It is."

Much to your relative annoyance, you do exactly as she suggests, making sure the door locks behind you.

You are not going back in there unless or until it is absolutely necessary.

That troll made a small, temporary crack in your composure - why must you only be nineteen? why must you only be a Neophyte? - and she does not need to know that bit of information until you collect yourself again.

You sigh, lean on your cane, and walk the few steps down to the cell marked “3”, hoping the next troll - Meulin Leijon, oliveblood, aged 17 sweeps - does not plan to try to play any head games with you.

You unlock the door with the keycard, enter, sniff at the air, and listen closely, but as far as you can tell, the cell is empty.

The place is filthy, rank with the smell of unwashed troll, and containing weird pictures, words, and runes painted across the walls, along with several deep scratches made against the floor and walls, like the sort a meowbeast makes against a post when it sharpens its claws.

You make sure your cane is extended before you proceed.

Meanwhile, the pictures, words, and runes all issue in varying shades of gray, as if the cell’s occupant decided to use her grubloaf as paint, but… where is the occupant, exactly?

You turn to exit the cell, intent on asking the guard what precisely is going on here. Another dose of sedative that warranted the removal of the occupant?

However before you can, a fully grown troll pounces on you from out of nowhere, knocking the wind out of you, and taking hold of your neck, a crazed look in her eyes.

“Mew culled him! Mew culled him, didn’t mew?” she demands. “And now you’re here fur me!”

You have a vague idea who the she’s talking about, but you haven’t culled anyone, nor do you plan to cull anyone. You’d tell her exactly this, but you’re rather unable to, things being what they are.

You exhale, groaning as you do so, against her weight.

You take the shallowest of inhales. It is insufficient for the gambit you plan to pull.

However, you have been trained in combat. You try to calm yourself, and remind yourself of all the times you have had to duel trolls for prestigious case placements, or to prove your worth at the Academy.

You relax a bare centimeter, operating on instinct alone.

With the hand that isn’t holding your cane, you scrabble for purchase against one of the walls, so you can regroup.

But this troll isn’t like the highbloods you’ve dueled. She's fighting for her life, and worst of all, she's absolutely convinced of this fact.

Pulling a new plan from your arsenal, you use what little breath you have to start screaming for assistance until you scream yourself hoarse.

The prisoner’s hold on your throat deepens as she hovers over you - it feels like she’s made of pure muscle - with her sharpened claws opening up wounds that ooze teal blood onto your uniform.

You try to roll around and gain some momentum, but you are small, only 50 kg and you will be culled, _the Academy highbloods will cull you, cane be damned, they’re all so much stronger and older, they’re going to press their advantage to cull you._

_(Latula, what are you doing here? Latula, run!)_

You inhale, _inhale_ , **_inhale_** , and find that you cannot.

You shove yourself forward and manage one minor inhalation, one that sends sweet oxygen to the cells of your thinkpan.

_(Latula, fight!)_

You try to ease into an approximation of your grief stance.

But the prisoner uses her free hand to repeatedly beat your head against the floor with such force that you see stars. You register pain, shouting upon screaming, upon… _critical injury, skull fracture?_

_Perhaps._

You surge forth again, with almost all that remains of your strength.

You grope for the release mechanism on your cane, hear it click - thank the Mother - thrust the sharpened end at this behemoth of a troll, and manage to spear her through the shoulder.

And that, that actually gives her pause.

She hisses, winces, lunges, and misses.

You catch her with an elbow to the face, and hear her nose crack, which gives you a few seconds to figure out your next move. Such an elementary injury that manages to breach her defenses. Why, you had your nose broken at least twice your first sweep at the Academy, before you learned how to backslide fluidly on a skateboard, before you figured out how to dodge entirely with regards to your size, as if you'd grown wings.

But there is no room to move on a skateboard, nor dodge here, in this holding cell.

_(You’re fucked, Latula. You’re going to die here, right here in this desolate fucking place.)_

No.

No you won’t.

Not yet.

_(Not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet, **not yet.** )_

You try to time your attacks as if you’re merely sparring with drones in the Academy gymnasium, their difficulty settings high but still predictable. A waltz of pauses interspersed with offensive strikes. You know these steps. Every highblood who ever attended the Imperial Academy of Law has probably committed them to memory.

_One._

_Two._

_**(Three-and-Strike. Uppercut to the jaw.)** _

_Four._

_Five._

**_(Six-and-Strike. Kick to the abdomen.)_**  
  
You gasp for air, greedily taking in lungfuls of stale oxygen, stagger to your feet, overcome with vertigo, and lean against the closed door.

“Meu…” You inhale deeply. It’s _not enough_. It will _never be enough_. Your body is positively screaming at you. You grind out, “Prisoner Meulin Leijon?”

She readies to hit you again. Before she can get up and into proper grief stance, you kick her once more in the side, hard enough to cause her to drop like a brick.

Then, you fall to your knees beside her, and fumble with the keycard that should unlock the door.

However, before you do, it opens on its own.

You slump to a sitting position, and watch as a drone rushes in, and gets her in the abdomen with a stun gun.

Her body jerks to and fro for several seconds.

Then, she goes limp, her eyes flickering.

The drone deploys the stun gun once more.

She spasms for a while, strange verbalizations issuing from her mouth, agonized verbalizations, that nearly make you feel for her plight.  _Nearly._

And then it hits her again.

The same thing happens. The same litany of awful sounds.

Her eyes roll back in her head.

You cannot simply sit and watch this take place, even as you struggle to take in air.

Yes, she could and would have killed you. But she still needs to stand trial, as per orders of the Empire. You can abide cruelty where it’s warranted, but this makes no sense. This goes against orders. This goes against the orders that will see Kurloz culled if he disobeys, and _there,_ at that thought, you find your second wind.

Palm flat against the wall, pulling with all your strength against the scratches in the stone, you manage to get yourself partially to your feet.

Before they can hit her for the fourth time, someone starts shouting, and it takes you a moment to realize that it’s you.

“She’s already down! She’s down for the Mother’s sake, you tin-can fucks!” you yell at the drones. “Stop doing that before you kill her! She has to stand trial! She has to--”

Your lungs finally betray you, and you find yourself unable to shout anything else.

From her spot on the floor not far away from you, Meulin half-gazes you with something like surprise, her eyes somewhat glazed over.

With the last of your strength, you try to make it to your feet, but fail miserably, your body hitting the floor with a thud.

The last words you hear before you lose consciousness consist of the dispassionate tone of a drone saying, _“... prompt medical attention… blood loss, another millimeter over and her jugular...”_

You close your eyes and let yourself go limp on the ground.

You’ll open them in a few minutes, you promise.

You just need to rest for a few moment. Get some air. Remember what unencumbered respiration feels like.

Or oblivion.

That would also suffice.


	3. our dried voices when we whisper together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i know i was supposed to update yesterday, but life and class got in the way for a bit.  
> let's just say i'll update twice a week and leave it at that, without specifying update dates in particular.

When you come to, foggy from being up to your eyeballs in painkillers but mostly alert otherwise, you’re in a medical center by the smell of it, everything antiseptic and scrubbed clean. You hear the beeping of a machine that is almost certainly monitoring your vitals.  
  
“Well, then,” someone whose voice you unfortunately recognize says. “You’re not dead. You have a thing for getting up to your nook in weird shit, but this is beyond all comprehension.”  
  
That’s gotta be Resident Mediculler Zossma Paeonn. You are surprised she isn’t giving off the faint smell of spirits and a disgruntled aura of extreme hangover. She must be a few hours into her shift, then.  
  
She’s patched you up once or twice before, mostly when you got into it with other prospective neophytes over prestigious cases.

While griefing with your cohorts is technically discouraged, it’s not illegal, and it’s not unheard of for trolls to die in duels like these.  
  
It makes sense to tacitly allow this. The strongest, most ambitious trolls in the Academy survive to serve the Empire’s interests - well, the law, technically, but the Empire is 4/5ths of the law - to their last breath. It’s always worked in the past.  
  
You try to sit up, but it’s kind of hard, since your sense of balance feels thrown off. It’s like your entire head has been swaddled in gauze and other heavy crap. For all you know, it has.  
  
“What happened?” you want to know, once you find your words. Instead of your usual strident tone, this question comes out in a strained rasp.  
  
Zossma taps what is presumably her stylus against her clipboard.

“Honestly, an auxiliatrix should be going through this with you, but Auxiliatrix Xhezet’s on break right now. And besides, I wanted to take a look at you,” she says. Of course she did. “Formalities, mostly. Anyway, what is your name?”

“Latula Pyrope,” you reply.

“How old are you, Latula?”

“Nineteen sweeps, eleven perigees.”

“What’s tonight’s date?”

“Fifth night, seventh perigee, two hundred and sixty-ninth sweep of the rule of the Empress.” You try to roll your eyes, but the action makes your head twinge in a most uncomfortable way. “Do I pass, Mediculler Paeonn?”

“Not quite,” she answers. “How did you come to be here?”

“That’s classified.”

“Not to your mediculler.”

“Whoever let you be my mediculler needs to read a book about conflict of interest,” you fire back. “Anyway, I was conducting an interview germane to a case I have been given, when the troll I was interviewing decided to engage me in grief. Then, I got knocked out. Good enough, now?”

“Good enough,” Zossma agrees. “What were you even doing in the catacombs, anyway?”  
  
“Long story,” you say.  
  
“I’ve got a little time. I can make time.”  
  
“Long, and classified story.”  
  
“Shit’s always classified with you legislacerators, but I’ve got most of the relevant information on the report that came with you when they brought you in.” She opens some kind of packet. “Think you can swallow, Pyrope?”  
  
Once upon a time, you had a flushed fling with this mediculler. Then, you ended up becoming her kismesis. So you kind of want to pop off with a smartass remark about how you’d gladly swallow if you weren’t incapacitated, but you’re in a little too much pain to be that cocky.  
  
“I think so. Why?”  
  
You hear the sound of liquid sloshing into a cup.  
  
“I have some pain medication for you. Your next dose is up, and you look like you need it,” she replies. “Also, just so you know, the Grand Highblood himself was here earlier. Mediculler Alnasl was practically shitting green apples over that one.”

You try to imagine Kurloz - Kurloz, in all his regalia, wearing a full face of paint - standing in the waiting room, or sitting at your bedside, and probably scaring the shit out of all the poor damned souls who work this medical center.  
  
You try for a laugh, but it hurts too much. You inhale gingerly.

“So did the aforementioned release of green apples occur before before or after Alnasl asked for his autograph?”  
  
“Both, I think. Still, though, I thought the Grand Highblood had inferiors to club in the skull. You in some hoofbeast excrement deep enough that he wanted to check on you personally?”  
  
You can practically hear her wiggling her eyebrows, and you manage to roll your eyes.  
  
“That’s classified, mediculler.”  
  
“Pale classified, red classified, ashen classified, or black classified?” she asks. “If it’s black, may the Mother have mercy on your soul.”  
  
“I’ll classify my foot up your wastechute if you don’t stop asking,” you reply.  
  
Zossma snorts.  
  
Ah yes, there’s your sense of humor. At least nobody’s concussed or otherwise injured that part of you.

“At any rate,” she continues, “My attending is going to come in and have a look at you again, and run some tests, since you’re conscious now. Anything else you want before I go back to doing actual work?”

You consider this for a few moments.

“Yes, Zossma,” you reply. “Would you please refrain from apprising Aquila as to my current situation?”

Zossma shakes her head, but ultimately agrees.

“Sure, Latula. She’ll probably decide that I'm completely plastered if I actually tell her about all of this.”

Small mercies, you figure.

Small mercies.

* * *

As per Attending Mediculler Acceso’s orders, you are supposed to spend four to seven days convalescing in your hive post-discharge from the medical center. 

As per the fact that every night of schoolfeeding you miss, your backload of assignments increases exponentially, you really do not give a flying fuck. At least if you die, you don't have to write any fucking theses.  
  
So three days later, you report to the Academy, wearing a high-necked uniform blouse to hide the healing wounds on your neck, and do your best to ignore the throb of your head.  
  
You’re halfway through reading a shitty pulp novel underneath the table while an instructor runs you and your cohorts through the minutiae of seadweller property rights with respect to the inheritance one’s clade can expect to receive. You already know this stuff. It's basically review. No, you do not have any questions. You have not had any real questions during lessons in about ten perigees.  
  
So, attention focused on legitimately important things, you’re nearly up to the part of the story where the rogue auspistice turns out to probably have been a double agent all along. Then, your comm goes off. You frown, mark your page, and close the book.  
  
You raise a finger to excuse yourself, leave the classroom, and lean back against a wall to answer it. The moment you realize who’s contacting you, you roll your eyes so hard that they nearly fall out of your head.  
  
“What,” you rasp flatly, in no mood to put up with this, or any, bullshit.  
  
“What the fuck crawled up your nook and died?” comes the response from the other end.  
  
“You tell me.”  
  
“Motherfuck, you sound awful," Kurloz says. "I thought you’d be at your hive, alla this shit considered. The fuck’re you doing out and about?”  
  
You sigh.  
  
“Well, I was attempting to learn, until my comm started buzzing,” you lie. You walk into an empty stairwell before you say anything else. “Is there something you need from me?”  
  
“Meet me at the usual place after you get out of your fucking lesson, Redglare. I’ll see to it that you’re given the rest of the evening off from class, so don’t worry ‘bout askin’ no permission.”  
  
“You got it, Kurloz.”  
  
“Bitchtits.”  
  
Then, he hangs up on you.

Wonderful.  
  
Kurloz Makara, full time Grand Highblood, and fuller time disaster.  
  
You remove a half-empty bottle of mild soporifics from your sylladex and take approximately one shot of it to wash down your pain medication.

You’re going to need both of these in order to deal with the veritable mountain of potentially deadly nonsense awaiting you. You’d almost rather spend the whole night in class. Almost. At least class is predictably tedious, and not typically deadly.  
  
Whereas last time you went to the catacombs, you almost died. If Kurloz wants to see you enough to get you out of lessons for it, you'll probably be returning to prisoner holding.

Why you?  
  
Once you get out of your lesson, you reflect that you definitely should not be on your skateboard in your condition. You wave down the nearest rickshaw, tell the bronzeblood driver that you’re going to District 23, and allay the pants-shitting fear on his face by promising to pay him double for his services.  
  
He only takes you to within a mile of the subjugglator fortress before he drops the poles and refuses to move any closer. You think of protesting that you're injured, and you really don't feel like walking the last mile, but you understand. He was either really brave or really broke to take you this far.   
  
So you make good on your promise to pay him double, thank him, and stumble up the winding road to the front doors to the Fortress of Mirth. That's its official name, at any rate.

The usual suspects are on guard duty tonight. Subjugglator the dumb, and subjugglator the tall.

Both of them stare at you like they have seen a ghost.  
  
“See, I told you the shitblood was alive!” the tall one exclaims to the dumb one. “Sixty caegars, pay up.”  
  
If it wouldn’t sting, you’d laugh yourself silly. You hand over your cane, and walk inside.

Kurloz is already waiting for you, looking more solemn than usual, his lips set in one displeased line.

Excellent. Just excellent.

Today promises to be interesting.  
  
“Grand Highblood?” you ask.  
  
“Follow me.”  
  
He leads you into a communal nutritionblock, one that is oddly devoid of other trolls, save a few subjugglators at one table, who appear to be eating, talking shit, and passing around a bottle of Faygo.

Their shit-talking grinds to a halt when they see you.

About a minute later, it starts up again.

Kurloz has you sit at one of the many empty tables, and sets some kind of meal down in front of you. He then sits directly across from you.  
  
You smile. Or grimace. One of those. Whichever hurts less.  
  
“There’s no sopor in this, is there?” you ask.  
  
“Not an ounce, sister,” he says. “You need to up an fucking eat, though.”  
  
You uncover the plate, and hope it’s not grubloaf. You have consumed so much grubloaf in your life that you may in fact be 57% grubloaf by volume.

Instead, when you chance a forkful, you find that whatever you’re eating is actually pleasant. With less dignity than you would ordinarily exhibit, you devour most of it before you even think to ask what it is.  
  
Actually, you know what? If Kurloz made it, you don’t want to know. You glance up at him, about to ask him if he’s satisfied, now, but his gaze is elsewhere.

You follow his line of sight to one great hulking fuck of a troll, clad in black armor with indigo accents.  
  
Oh, this guy. Executor Darkleer. You’ve crossed paths with him before. Several times in fact.

Aside from being the head of the archeradictators, he is kismesis to the Grand Highblood. You're not sure which troll you feel sorrier for in this equation.

(Probably whichever troll happens to be their auspistice. You haven't met them. You don't want to, although the two of you could probably swap some epic stories.)  
  
“Highblood,” he says, saluting Kurloz, and making an exaggerated bow. You very narrowly manage not to snort, or to choke on your food.  
  
Executor Darkleer gives you a confused little nod of acknowledgment, as usual.  
  
“At fuckin’ ease, Horuss, and chill the fuck out,” Kurloz tells him. “Still, I thought I said I was not to be motherfucking disturbed until later.”  
  
“My apologies for interrupting your…” He looks at you again, wrinkles his nose, and trails off. “Nevertheless. The oliveblood continues to be properly subdued, as per your orders.”  
  
“She’s fuckin’ conscious, though, right?”  
  
“Yes, Grand Highblood.”  
  
Kurloz turns to you, then.

“Well, Redglare, given what happened the last time you tried to interview this heretic, I could probably dispense with her trial and send her straight the fuck to execution.”

He's not thinking clearly. He's angry about what happened to you, and he isn't thinking clearly.

Someone needs to remind him of this fact.  
  
“Do you really that’d be a wise course of action, at all?” you ask.  
  
Executor Darkleer gives you the most scandalized look you’ve ever seen in your life, You’ve been in the Academy for several sweeps, and seen all manner of scandalized looks. Shit, you’ve _given_ half of them.  
  
“You _dare question_ the Grand Highblood?” he asks.  
  
Kurloz rises from his seat.  
  
“What the motherfuck did I just fucking say about simmering the fuck down?” he wants to know. “Neophyte Redglare here is part of my legal counsel, and therefore, is allowed, even up an fuckin encouraged to ask motherfucking questions. Got it?”

The subjuggulators who had previously been engaged in conversation have now decided to watch this argument. You don't blame them. This is entertaining as all hell.

Darkleer lowers his gaze.

“Yes, Highblood.”

Kurloz then turns his back on Darkleer, by way of addressing you again. “Still, Redglare, if you’re still plannin’ on interviewing her and the others, you don’t have to fuckin’ do it tonight. That shit, at least, can wait until tomorrow motherfucking evening.”  
  
You glance between the two large trolls in front of you.

For the fifty-sixth time this week, you mentally ask the most pressing question of the sweep. Why you?  
  
“If I do not have to interview any prisoners tonight, precisely what am I doing here?”

One glance at Darkleer informs you that he’s gotten his undergarments in a twist at your impertinence again. You add, only half sarcastic, “All due respect, Grand Highblood.”  
  
Kurloz’s lips twitch at their corners, as if he’d like to laugh his ass off.  
  
“Cause you needed to fuckin’ eat, and you needed some rest. Fuck, you should still be in your recuperacoon. Shitblood almost got her murder on in your direction and you’re already up and about? Fucksake Latula! What the motherfuck is wrong with you?”  
  
“You brought me here just to feed me, and to make sure I rest. Are you serious?” you rasp.  
  
“Someone has to.”  
  
“I have food in my hive! And a recuperacoon! You’ve been there! You’ve seen it!” you exclaim.  
  
Kurloz shoosh-paps you until all you can do is shoot him dirty looks, and you can barely even do that. Weakly, you glance around. The subjugglators are still watching, many of them grinning.  
  
Darkleer has turned a shade of indigo that you did not think any troll’s face could possibly turn.

Also, his face is glistening with sweat, as if he’s been made to run twenty miles in the amount of time it took you and Kurloz to have your usual argument for today.   
  
Darkleer, well Horuss, when he's less pissy, he weirds you out, but you are nevertheless mildly worried about his well-being.  
  
He very quietly and politely asks Kurloz if he may be excused, but the latter is too busy focusing on you.  
  
“Instant noodles are not fuckin’ food. End of the motherfucking argument,” Kurloz says. Then, he notices Darkleer again. “And Horuss? Get outta here before you up an’ die of dehydration. That’s an order.”

"Yes, Highblood," Darkleer replies, looking glad of it.

You spend a good chunk of the day in Kurloz's recuperacoon, the walls of his respiteblock painted with the blood of heretics. Meanwhile, Kurloz pores over documents, or diagrams of some sort, looking deadly serious. When you awaken every so often to ask him what he's doing, he tells you to go back to sleep. Not to worry.

"Ain't no major thing, Latula. I got this shit _well an' fucking handled_."

If he says so. You'll ask later.

You do your level best to ignore the decor, and the way the room reeks of Faygo.

Then, you do as you're told, letting yourself drift under, the constant race of your mind winding down into blissful somnolence.


	4. voices are in the wind's singing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are going to start to get very interesting from here on out

After spending a day in Kurloz's recuperacoon, you are more or less steady enough on your skateboard to make it back to your hive. He all but insists on having one of his subordinates accompany you. However, you live a midblood district, and the sight of a subjugglator would probably scare your neighbors (and everyone else).

"I can make it, Kurloz," you assure him. "I'll be fine. I'll even contact you when I get there."

"Yeah, fine, sister, whatever."

He makes a very good show of pretending not to be worried. You kiss his cheek.

"See you tomorrow night?" you ask.

He thinks for a second before he responds.

"Guess you gotta come 'round here tomorrow night, but you won't be seeing much of my sorry ass," he says. "The Empress is gettin' impatient with our motherfucking progress. So we gotta hurry up and get this shit  _done_ , Tula. Hate to push you when you're up an' convalescing but..."

He looks as if he's genuinely sorry.

"I understand," you reply.

You'd meant to ask him what sort of documents he had been reviewing while you were conked out, but now doesn't seem like the most appropriate time. You'll ask tomorrow, then. 

When you get back to your hive, you hear movement inside, at least you think it’s inside your hive, and not the one next door. There shouldn't be any noise coming from the hive next door - your neighbor is always exceedingly quiet. Not unless someone's broken in, of course.

Then again, you’ve seen the way your neighbor in this communal hivestem keeps his space, and have determined that there's not exactly much there worth stealing. He's a professional at hoarding junk, and he's rarely ever there, but he's an okay guy. Chamal, you think his name is. You're not sure what his profession is, but if he's affluent enough to live here, it's probably an Imperial posting of some sort.

Still, though.

The sound coming from inside the hive continues. You ease yourself into your grief stance, even though it causes some minor discomfort. You won’t be caught unawares again.

You silently raise your cane, one-handedly unlock the door, and open it slowly, cane still extended in front of you.

You’ll strike if you have to. You will. You’re not afraid. You're not being the one caught by surprise this time.

However, once you can make out the vague shape of the troll standing next to your sofa, you lower your cane.

It’s only Aquila.

Aquila Zibanu. Your matesprit.

You wait for your heart rate to normalize again, and then apologize profusely. Before you’re done apologizing, she starts taking.

“Latula, you really need to stop consuming so many energy grubs,” she says. “They make you all jittery and paranoid.”

She very kindly does not bring up the fact that you could have impaled her. Who said red romance is dead? And, as if you would ever voluntarily consume energy grubs in excess. They taste awful. What kind of troll does she take you for?

“Couldn’t have knocked, Aquila?” you ask, before remembering that not only did she not knock, she decided to break and enter while you weren’t around.

“It would been difficult to knock and receive a response, considering the fact that you weren’t here. While you were very clearly not here, I took the liberty of feeding Pyralspite. She’s all tense because you haven’t been around."

"I'll visit her in an hour or so," you say, feeling bad now. Pyralspite has been your one constant companion over the sweeps. She deserves a better show of gratitude than neglect, no matter how busy you might be.

"And I got you tea," Aquila adds. "I deserve a medal for this, I hope you know that. I should be made a member of the Empress’s court, even.”

“A medal, and more besides,” you reply, taking the palm of her hand, and kissing your way up her inner arm, which causes her to giggle.

She leans forward, so close that you can feel her breath on your face. You peel the first layer of her uniform away from her body. She unbuttons your blouse and lets it fall to the floor. You’re going to have to fold that at some point. You pull her into a kiss, one she eagerly deepens, a trill of satisfaction in her throat.

Then, you remember the tea. You pull away.

Aquila blinks at you, confused.

“So, what kind of tea do I have now?”

She mutters something about having been tragically bulgeblocked by herbs, of all the things she could possibly be bulgeblocked by. 

(At least it’s not like the time your kismesis decided to stay over because she’d been working without a break for the last three days, your hive is within walking distance of the medical center, and you keep high proof spirits under your sink. Allegedly that’s why she stayed, anyway. 

You don’t think you’d be remiss in believing she was actively trying to bulgeblock you, because you’d done something similar to her two perigees before. What can you say? Messing with her is almost as fun as _messing with_ her.

Whoever let Zossma pass the boards and become a mediculler should be tried and executed for causing a public health emergency, because you have never met a troll who gets intoxicated as often as she does. At least she restricts the consumption of soporifics to her off hours. You’d report her if anything else were the case.

You hope she doesn’t make an appearance at your hive. You think she’s on call today, so it’s possible that she’ll show up in the middle of the afternoon like some kind of white coat wearing specter and demand either a duel or a shot of absinthe.)

Then, Aquila raises the metal container of tea up to your nose so you can smell it. You’ve never smelled anything like it, but it’s interesting. Fruity.

“It’s fancy tea from the blueblood market, since my moirail took me shopping. You should have come with us, would have given you a chance to wind down. It’s got dragonfruit in it, and I guess if indigos drink it, it’s probably fancy enough for you.”

You’ve never seen a dragonfruit before. You really hope it isn’t made from actual dragons.

But Aquila gives you a significant look when she suggests that you need to wind down. You wonder if Zossma broke down and told her what happened.

You hear the hissing sound your kettle makes after she puts on the water.

“You wound me,” you say, planting a kiss on the back of her head.

“If we're going to talk wounds, I’m not the one who almost ran me through with your cane, for the record.”

“You broke into my hive.”

“It’s not breaking in if you gave me a spare key,” she says. “Besides, I have serious work to do tomorrow, and your hive’s closer to the Academy.”

You grin.

“Well, excuse me, Neophyte Longhorn.”

“You’re excused, Redglare. I also took the liberty of organizing your papers, ‘cause I owe you from last perigee.”

Something like fear takes hold in your gastric sac.

“My papers, Aquila?  _All_  of my papers?”

Her long pause answers that question.

“ _All of your papers_ , yes.” She picks up a file folder and hands it to you, a wry smile on her face. “Why didn’t you tell me about this case? I didn’t even know you were allowed to take on cases at the moment without supervision.”

“It’s classified,” you say, attempting to placate her.

“Yeah? No kidding.” She pours the both of you some tea. “You could have told me about it. I know how to keep quiet.”

That, she does.

“Orders from the Grand Highblood himself,” you tell her.

“Yeah, I figured that out when I saw his stamp. Still, I can’t believe he’s going to let them stand trial. I can’t believe the  _Empress_  is going to let them stand trial.”

“The outcome of the trial has already been decided. I am merely consulting to make it look as if it hasn’t.”

Aquila takes a long drink of tea, resting her head on your shoulder.

“Yeah? I thought so,” she says. “It’s a shame.”

Your ears prick up at that. 

You know she observed more than a few of the signless mutant’s speeches, and then you and she had debated his words up and down, but you never thought she actually sympathized with him. You assumed it was just an academic exercise.

“Really?”

“Hemoequality is preposterous, but…” She trails off for a moment. “I can understand why lowbloods would want to even the score. And the mutant wasn’t even talking about evening the score. He was talking about wiping the slate clean and starting over.”

“Lowbloods are lowbloods. Even if they were given power, they would scarcely know what to do with it, and it’s not as if they’d live long enough to properly affect change the way their betters can. For all we know, they’d enslave us.”

“Same way we do to them, it could be argued.”

Aquila is fond of arguments. Probably why you love her.

“Not at all,” you answer. “We are being merciful in the way we treat them, given the studies that have demonstrated their diminished decision-making capacity. Whereas treating us that way would be a violation of our rights.”

“Sure, yeah. You’re right,” Aquila replies, by way of resolving the matter, but something tells you that this matter is hardly resolved. Your head hurts, and it has nothing to do with the injuries you sustained a few days prior. She changes the subject. “Still, what’s your plan of action?”

“It should be fairly easy,” you say. “I point out that none of them were in their right minds, because they quite clearly were not acting in their right minds. All the evidence points that way, including the way the oliveblood behaved toward me, I don't know if you've been made aware of that."

"Well, sure. Zossma told me while she was really out of it," Aquila replies. "By the way, you should be in your recuperacoon, to be quite honest. Zossma said your injuries weren't the sort to be taken lightly."

Fucking Zossma. Why should you have expected different? You make a mental note to yell at her later.

You continue, "As for the jadeblood, I can suggest that she had been swayed by spending too many sweeps in their company, and would not have acted in such a preposterous manner alone, as a means of ensuring that she is enslaved rather than culled.”

“You have it fully thought out, then.”

“I always have things thought out,” you say. “The only problem is, the jadeblood is the oldest of the bunch, which somewhat discredits my defense. Even so, the prosecution will have no choice but to accept my account of the events, since we are technically working with each other.”

“Why isn’t she being culled again?”

“Given the current atmosphere, culling an auxiliatrix, even a self-exiled one, would ruffle a lot of feathers. We do not need to ruffle any feathers at the moment.”

“Better not let them testify, then. The accused, I mean,” Aquila says, in full Neophyte Longhorn mode. “You don’t want them contradicting you, especially that mutant. He’s articulate for a lowblood, believe me.”

You had not thought of that surprisingly. Then again, you’ve only ever heard his sermons secondhand.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t leave that to chance.”

Still thinking, Aquila drinks the last of her tea. “If you already have your defense plotted out, why do you have to interview them? Or did I misread your notes?”

“It has to be on the record that I did, Longhorn. From what the Grand Highblood let slip–” and from what Aquila herself has inadvertently managed to let slip “–these four trolls likely have allies in high places. Let’s say there’s even the slightest breach of protocol, and a crusading legislacerator or someone in a similar position goes through the records, notices that no interviews were made, and decides to make a fuss about it. Then, they throw the legitimacy of the trial into question.”

“And that troll cannot be culled for leveling such an assertion?”

“Not without causing a great deal of an inquiry,” you reply. “Things are not so simple anymore.”

“They never were."

She pauses to pour herself another cup of tea, and take a sip, before she goes on.

"That being said, why choose you to mount this defense? she asks. “Not to disparage your skills, but if they want to make things seem legitimate, it would stand to reason that a full legislacerator defending the accused would look better to all observers.” 

“It’s a sloppy move, I admit. Maybe the Grand Highblood wants someone whom he knows will act in precisely the way he desires.”

You hate to describe yourself that way, but…

You heave a heavy sigh.

There is another rationale Kurloz could have for choosing you. At first, you thought that his general distrust for most legislacerators - all that red tape they make him and his subjugglators go through with regards to incident reports on those who have been culled by his forces - constituted his basis for choosing you of all trolls. He trusts you, if not your profession. 

Then, you read a different set of writing on the wall, but elected not to confront him about it. What purpose would it serve? You’ll have to do it anyway. Also, he's your moirail. Surely he wouldn't throw you to the wolves intentionally. Right?

Besides, you will be rewarded for your service, should everything go to plan. A completely twisted quid pro quo, but a quid pro quo nevertheless.

“You’re the troll for that duty? You want to be the one in the hot seat? The populace isn’t stupid. Any troll who supports the cause of those four will definitely have you on their list of individuals to harass, maybe even assassinate after all this is over,” Aquila says, echoing your private concerns. “In fact, that might be why he picked you. You’re barely even a neophyte. Losing you wouldn’t be as much of a setback as losing a more seasoned legislacerator.”

Your gastric sac turns again. Yes, that’s what you had worried as well. You take advantage of this lull in the conversation to fire off a message to Kurloz, something to the effect that you got back to your hive in one piece.

“You may be correct, but I do not think that is the reason," you say. "I think the Grand Highblood respects me more than that. Regardless, I am in no position to refuse this assignment."

Aquila nods.

“That’s for certain.”

 Once you feel more calm, more in control of your destiny, and less like a pawn, you give her a small smile.

“You know, you’re breaking the rules, Neophyte Longhorn. You should be stripped of your title.”

“Oh, am I?” she asks, returning the smile.

“Yes. And more egregiously, you were the one who made the rule,” you continue. “No talking shop in my hive before dusk.”

“What’s my punishment, then, Redglare? I trust you to see that justice is served.”

Cheeky troll. You are utterly enamored by her.

“Follow me into my respiteblock,” you reply. “I’m sure I can think of something suitable.”


	5. the hope only of empty men

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> double update day!  
> meaning i am probably not going to update again until well into next week.  
> also... i said shit was gonna start getting interesting?  
> here's where it starts getting interesting.

When you report to the fortress, you hand your cane to the sentries to be registered, but subjugglator the dumb quickly returns it to you.

"Direct orders from the motherfuckin' Grand Highblood hisself," subjugglator the dumb says, before returning it to you. "You keep this tonight. Got it, shitblood?"

As one of the members of his church might put it, _motherfucking miracles._

"Got it."

You consult with Kurloz briefly. He brings you up to speed on certain things, things that you will contemplate later when you have the time, because at the moment, time is not on your side. Her Imperious Condescension is growing restless, apparently. You need to finish these interviews so the trial can proceed.

Kurloz also informs you that security around these prisoners has been tightened. They should pose no threat to you, but nevertheless... 

"Be fucking careful, alright, Redglare?" he asks, one of his giant arms around your shoulders. You reach up to pap him. "You can always do the interviews another night, if shit heads south. But if you up an' get your ass fuckin' killed, well, that's the end." 

"Yes, Grand Highblood."

Somehow, you'll need to balance expediting this process with keeping yourself safe. You close your eyes and sigh.

What will be will be.

You head to the basement, passing a few more subjugglators along the way. One, Alshat, you think her name is, gives you a brief nod of recognition, but refrains from the "Whoop! Whoop!" you'd expected from her. She's got other things on her mind, that much is clear.

You know she's one of Kurloz's advisors. That's about all you know about her. She unscrews the top off a bottle of Faygo and takes a drink.

You keep walking, and finally tap the door of prisoner holding with your cane.

After receiving two keycards from the subjugglator in charge of the catacombs, you decide to interview the goldblood in cell 4 next.

Mituna Captor, aged 24 sweeps, formerly an instructor in one of the psion compounds. You’ve been assured time and time again that he is wearing two collars - one collar that acts as a psionic dampener and prevents him from doing anything but sparking, and another with explosive charges in it that will detonate it if he leaves the boundaries of the catacombs.

You’ve also been told that he is quite physically weak, and that without his powers, he will not pose much of a threat in any attempted hand to hand combat. Still, he has been partially sedated, just in case.

You enter his cell, and it’s cleaner than Meulin’s, but dirtier than the the auxiliatrix’s. There a few stray drops of sopor slime on the floor. He stands against the opposite wall from where you enter, one leg crossed over the other, his arms at his sides.

“Psion Instructor Mituna Captor?” you ask.

He shrugs.

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” he replies, before he gives you the once-over. “You’re definitely not the guy with the grubloaf, and it’s too early for my second meal anyway, so, uh, _who the fuck?”_

Whatever you were expecting, this was not it.

Still, you find it easy to keep your demeanor cool and professional.

“I am Neophyte Redglare,” you tell him.

He has no appreciable reaction to this. He taps his foot against the floor.

“Well, if you’re here to cull me, can you make it quick?” he asks. “It’s fucking boring in here. I’ve been in isolation before, but at least the cells were packed close enough that we could bang on the walls and send each other messages and shit. Also, the grubloaf sucks. I didn’t know you could make grubloaf taste more awful than it usually does, but this is the worst grubloaf I’ve ever had.”

You’d looked through the information the government had on him and noticed that he had been classified mentally unsound for most of his life - manic-depressive, among other things - but this is beyond all comprehension. He’s about to be tried for treason, and he’s _bored_ and complaining about the grubloaf.

“Nobody is going to cull you, Mituna.”

He snorts loudly. “No shit? That’s what I was fucking afraid of. What are you doing here, then?”

“In a few days time, you will be tried for treason, along with several other crimes against the Empire. I have been tasked with defending you in court. Therefore, I will need your cooperation, in order to construct a defense.” You take a stack of papers out of your folder, and it makes an audible thump against the floor. You do wish you had a table to sit at, but then again, he might try to throw it at you. You don't want to take that chance. “Would you like me to read you the offenses with which you have been accused, to start?”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure I know everything I did,” he says, waving a flippant hand. “Culling a whole bunch of Imperial Army members, leaving the psion compound without permission and never returning, promulgating treasonous rhetoric, like you said, resisting arrest more times than I can count on both hands, failing to contribute pails to the drones for like a million sweeps, fudging my official psionic exam results, hacking into government mainframes to continue fudging my psionic exam results, two to the twenty-second power acts of petty theft, assaulting some subjugglators, telling the Grand Highblood to suck my bulge, advocating for the overthrow and assassination of the Empress - you shoulda heard Kankri when I said that one - aiding multiple fugitives, failing to report a mutant troll to the authorities, illegal purchase and possession of deadly weapons, black quadrant prostitution, red quadrant prostitution, but it was only that one time, and uh….” He pauses. “Hold on, I know there’s more. Give me a second, here.”

You look through your papers, and note that many of these crimes are not even on the official list of offenses attributed to him. You raise your finger to indicate that he should pause.

“I think that’s quite enough to be getting along with for now,” you say. “Are there any extenuating circumstances that would possibly justify the commission of any or all of these offenses?”

“They seemed like a pretty good idea at the time,” he says. “What do you want me to say? That I performed them under duress, or I wasn’t aware of their illegality, or some other hoofbeast shit?”

You are utterly bemused by this troll.

“I’m not expecting anything anymore, to be perfectly frank.” You find the sheet of paper with the summarized list of offenses, and pass it over to him. “These are what you’re going to be tried for. I think you should read them over, before you speak again.”

He nods, and accepts them.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

It takes him about twenty seconds to get through the whole thing. Once he’s through, he laughs, and states that you guys flatter him.

“So, Redglare,” he starts out. “Assuming I’m convicted of all of these things, what sentence am I facing? Death by firing squad? Do you even know?”

There’s no reason not to tell him the truth. Or part of it, anyway.

“Conscription into the Imperial Fleet, as a helmsman, for the remainder of your life.”

“Any way I can plead down and just get the death by firing squad? I’ll paint a target sign on my thorax and everything.”

You sigh, consider putting your face in your hands for a while, and ultimately settle for rolling your eyes.

“I’ll look into it,” you finally reply. “However, I think it would be prudent to remind you that this is not the time or place to joke around. These are serious accusations.”

Mituna gives you a sidelong glance.

“Whatever led you to believe I was joking?”

“At this point?” you ask. “I have no clue.”

He stares at you for half a minute, chuckles to himself, and looks at you again, before saying, “Wow. You look really pissed off.”

“You don’t even know the half of it,” you answer. You pick up your papers, reorganize them, and tuck the folder back under your arm. “I am leaving now, so that you might think about what you wish to tell me, on the record. I will return within twenty-four hours or less to consult with you once more, and hopefully receive a more serious statement from you. If you wish to obtain a physical copy of the offenses for which you are being tried, please notify a guard. Ordinarily this would go without saying, but until then, try not to get into too much trouble.”

You're definitely going to need time to rework your defense.

“Got it, Redglare,” he says. "Hey, can you tell the guy with the grubloaf that I'm going on hunger strike?"

You shoot him a glare that could melt steel.

"Or not," he adds.

You exit Mituna’s cell, and make sure the door is properly locked. You think of returning to your hive now, and speaking with the last prisoner tomorrow night, but at this point, you just want to get things over with. Besides, you're still operating under time constraints. Best to get this done, then.

The final troll seems as if he’ll be the most interesting, which is saying a great deal, given the things you have witnessed here thus far.

Kankri Vantas, mutantblood (candy red), aged 15 sweeps.

You take out the keycard for the cell marked “11”, walk over to it, and unlock the door.

Your first impression of the place is that it is nearly as spotless as the auxiliatrix’s cell. However, unlike the auxiliatrix, this troll wears both arm and ankle shackles. You don’t know why. He’s small, and slight, and nothing on file says he possesses telekinesis, or exceptional abilities in hand-to-hand combat, aside from his ability to wield sickles. Even his horns are underwhelming.

This troll? This small, young troll, the leader of a rebellion that could have toppled the Empire if all the stories are to be believed? The greatest security risk this prison has ever seen?

_Seriously? Is this a prank of some sort?_

“Kankri Vantas?” you ask, your cane held defensively nevertheless.

He sits in a meditation position, or as close to one as he can approximate given the shackles, repeating mantras in a language you don't understand.

You've heard auxiliatrices speak it before, though. Vindemiatrix, you think, is its official designation.

You wonder how he even knows such a language, until you remember that the jadeblood troll in holding allegedly acted as his lusus. 

Kankri stops chanting.

Once he opens his eyes, he gives you a genuine smile, gazing at you as if you're an old friend of his, his expression that of soft wonder.

Even his teeth are blunt.

“Latula Pyrope, Knight of Mind,” he says, in a gentle, yet confident tone. “It certainly is great to see you again.”


	6. shade without color, gesture without motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> neophyte redglare and the signless have a much needed but somewhat disturbing chat, at least it's somewhat disturbing from redglare's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know how i said i was going to update twice a week? finals hit me in the face like a brick, and i hit a wall with the way in which i want to finish this fic. so i guess i'll be updating every week or every other week for the moment.  
> also reading [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12844542) will probably cause certain things to make a little more sense.

"Again?” you ask prisoner Kankri Vantas. “I cannot recall having ever met you.”

“You wouldn’t, Latula,” he replies. “But we have met, in a manner of speaking. I have to say that short hair suits you. Probably easier to skate without having to tie it back the way you did the last time I talked to you.”

Your blood runs colder in your veins.

_Is he stalking you?_

First off, he knows your name. Not your title. Your hatchling name.

That should not be possible.

It occurs that maybe he had the psion hack into the computer system to find out this information, but the goldblood had already been arrested by the time you were chosen to represent his case.

Second off, Prisoner Vantas knows you once wore your hair long, and, on a whim, decided to chop it off to just below chin length.

And lastly, he knows that your primary method of transportation is your skateboard, which has been lovingly cared for over the sweeps.

He should not know any of these things.

More perplexingly, for whatever reason, he called you something you’ve never been called, an appellation you don’t even recognize. Knight of What? _Knight of Mind?_

You’re confused, and you feel off balance.

You are not fond of experiencing either of those sensations.

“I’ve scared you, haven’t I?” he asks. 

“Not in the least,” you say. “You’re shackled. I’m not.”

“My physical state has nothing to do with your apprehension,” he says. “You don’t have to be afraid, though. I don’t mean you any harm.”

“You couldn’t, even if you wanted to.”

“That is true. Nonetheless, what brings you here? Is it time for my sentencing already?”

He wants to use your hatchling name, like you're familiars? Well, you'll just use his, then.

“No, Kankri. Not just yet. I am Neophyte Redglare. I have been put in charge of defending you during your trial.”

You give him the same speech you gave the auxiliatrix, and Mituna, and the one you attempted to give Meulin before she tried to kill you.

You then take out your documents, and leaf through them, until you find the sheets that pertain to him in particular.

“Do you want me to read you the crimes of which you are being accused?” you ask.

He shrugs.

“If you wish. If you must.”

“I don’t have to,” you say. “I can just give them to you to read over. As long as you’re aware of them.”

He nods at you, expression inscrutable. “That’s fine, then.”

You hand him his summarized list of offenses. He takes longer to read through them than Mituna did, and once he’s finished, he has no comment.

You idly tap your cane against the stone floor, by way of breaking the silence.

“Do you wish to enter a plea with regards to these?”

“Oh, I’m guilty, most definitely. You needn’t defend me.”

He gives you a small smile.

You roll your eyes.

“That makes my job a lot easier, in certain respects.”

“I’m glad of it,” he says, and for a second, you're certain he’s being sarcastic, but there isn’t a hint of that about him. Maybe he’s just insane, like the others, even more insane than the others, because he was their ringleader.

Maybe you’re just wound up from this entire thing, or maybe his whole “I know your name and things about you that few trolls do” spiel has you utterly creeped out, but you speak before you have time to weigh your words.

“You know, aside from the high treason, and it’s incredibly difficult to set that aside, you’d have the easiest defense of anyone I’ve spoken to,” you tell him. “You haven’t culled anyone, injured anyone except in self-defense and not even seriously injured them, or even done much besides talk a whole lot.”

Kankri gives an altogether wistful smile. 

“Talking a great deal is one of my few talents.”

You are going to demand Kurloz's life savings as a bribe when you're done with these trolls.

“And yet, despite this, you do not wish to defend yourself in any way,” you confirm.

“It would be difficult to defend myself against the inevitable fate I face,” he says. “Trolls have heard my message during my time on Alternia, and my message is treasonous according to the law. Either the trolls who heard me will listen, or they will not. That part is out of my hands.”

“So you meant to incite acts of sedition against the Empire, then,” you respond, by way of clarifying his stance.

“In speaking out, I meant to provide trolls with the latitude to think on their actions, how those actions are conditioned and encouraged by external forces, and to decide for themselves how they should best proceed to make things equal for all,” he says. “Moreover, the idea of law and order, of the legitimacy of the empire, is meaningless without the opportunity for free dialogue on whether or not circumstances are truly just or unjust.”

“Mother of all grubs, you sound like an instructor I used to have at the academy,” you say, snorting faintly at the thought.

“Used to have,” he repeats. “I assume they are no longer your instructor.”

Well, the instructor in question got culled back when you were fourteen, probably because she had her own subtle ways of questioning the empire's legitimacy, but they clearly weren't subtle enough.

(Unless she’s still instructing from beyond the grave. Is there schoolfeeding in the afterlife? There probably is.)

The expression on Kankri face suggests that he knows, or at least suspects, the fate of your instructor.

“No,” you answer. “Not anymore.”

He nods. And then that same smile, again.

“I know I’ve already asked this question, but why are you really here?” he wants to know.

“I’ve already told you. I’m the troll in charge of defending you when you are brought forth to stand trial.”

“Why, though? We both already know how this is going to end.”

Great, another troll who thinks he knows everything. Why are you not surprised? Him and his longwindedness. 

You chew on your lower lip. A nervous habit. You want to lie to Kankri, but he's going to be executed anyway. Might as well be level with him.

“To be honest? I wasn’t given much of a choice,” you reply.

(Yet another thing you should not have told him. Latula Pyrope, you are on a roll today. You should have just gone back to your hive after your bizarre conversation with the goldblood.)

“You are always given a choice,” he says, his hands moving as if he would like to gesticulate, but cannot, due to the shackles. “Though some choices are admittedly easier to make than others.”

You shake your head emphatically. 

“You have no idea of the choices I’ve made.”

“Not in this life, no,” he says.

“In this life?”

“Humor a troll facing certain death for a few minutes?” he asks.

You fail to see why you cannot.

“Alright, then.” You make sure your cane is where you can access it easily. “If you try anything, though, you’ll be dead before you can lay a finger on me.”

“Fair enough.” He inhales deeply. “What if I told you there were other worlds, other universes even?”

“Then I’d say you have an elementary grasp of astrophysics that suggests you paid vague attention in wiggler schoolfeeding.”

“I’m not finished. Other worlds, where certain characteristics of this one remain, we remain, but most everything has been changed. A parallel universe, if you will.”

What the shit is he even going on about?

“And?” you ask.

“And in this universe, things are peaceful in a way you would be unlikely to comprehend. Not to call into question your intellect in any way, but..." He trails off for a moment. "There, the hemospectrum exists but means something entirely different. Lowbloods aren't enslaved, or made to serve highbloods. Questioning the empire is not considered high treason. It's not a perfect world, not by any means, but it's so much freer than this one."

"I see."

"Imagine if you had visions of this world, even as you existed here, where things have been twisted by omnipresent violence and oppression.”

This mutant’s psych eval suggested that he suffered from a delusional disorder, but you’re nevertheless intrigued. He’s crazy, but he’s interesting and crazy. You’ve always gotten on with the interesting crazy ones. Just look at your quadrants.

“So you’re having visions,” you say, flatly. “You know, psychosis might factor into your defense.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” His tone categorically dismisses the very idea. “At any rate, assuming someone had such visions, interspersed with very real instances of terror and despair, said troll would have a choice, the same way we all have choices. Keep quiet about the visions of a kinder world, or pass the message on, to see if he could change things here, or at least attempt to convince others that things could change.”

You make a note on one of the pieces of paper you have.

“And that’s what you believe you've been doing.”

“That’s what I’ve tried to do. Although the fact that I should have been culled as a grub made my decision much easier,” he says. “When you are already guilty of a crime by virtue of your existence, committing a few more crimes is much simpler, even if they shouldn’t be crimes to start with.”

Okay, now you're beginning to lose your temper.

“Suggesting that the mechanisms by which the Empire functions be toppled isn’t a crime? Isn’t absolute high treason?”

“If this, this regime, this system, is what you call functional, you are entitled to that opinion,” he says. “But I am not obligated to agree.”

“Very well,” you concede. “Have you anything at all to say in your defense that wouldn’t implicate you any further?”

“I doubt it.”

You sigh. Why. Why even?

You ought to get absolutely falling-down hammered off soporifics when you get back to your hive. If you could stand their taste, you just might consider it.

“Is there anything else you wish to say, on or off the record?” you ask him.

“As a matter of fact, there is.”

Oh great. He’s going to start up with bullshit about visions of an idyllic world again.

But now he looks sad.

“I was wondering if you could pass a message. I understand if that is not possible.”

You decide to show him a little leniency, as much leniency as you can while you operate by the books.

“As of now, you are detained. You are not allowed to pass any messages to anyone outside of the holding cells, and any messages you wish to pass to trolls within them must be approved first.”

He nods.

“That’s fine. I just need something to write with, and something to write on. You can read the messages when I’m finished, and then decide whether it's okay to pass them along.”

You hand him a sheet of paper mostly bereft of text, and your favorite stylus.

He requests an extra sheet of paper.

What’s he writing? His memoirs? A manifesto? Probably a manifesto. He’s definitely political enough for that nonsense.

Still, you oblige. The faster you do this, the faster you can get the fuck out of here.

After a bit of finagling, he manages to figure out a way to write even despite his shackles. He doesn’t write much. On the first sheet, he writes three short paragraphs. On the second sheet, he writes something that looks like a list, as far as you can tell, with a message beneath it.

When he’s finished, he passes the stylus, and the sheets back to you.

“The second sheet is addressed to you, and you alone,” he says.

“That I should be so lucky,” you mutter.

He gives you a grin for that one, and laughs, truly laughs.

“Times like this, you remind me of Beforus, the old world. We were friends, all of us, even if you don't believe me,” he says. “And our dynamic wasn’t too far away from what it’s been for these last few minutes. I refused to stop talking even when I should have, and at some point you stopped listening, just sat there, and nodded at me.”

“Whatever you say, Kankri.”

You are mentally counting down the seconds until you can leave.

“At any rate, thank you, Latula,” he says, his eyes having filled with tears. “Thank you for everything.”

You keep meaning to tell him to stop calling you that, but it doesn’t matter. You’re getting out of here. He can call you whatever he desires, once you're gone.

“I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re thanking me for,” you reply.

“I trust that you’ll do the right thing,” he tells you. “And even if you don’t, I forgive you. Tell Kurloz and Meenah that I forgive them, too.”

_Kurloz?_

Again with the fucking names that this shackled troll shouldn’t know?

“Right. Okay. Forgiveness. No idea what I’m being forgiven for, but thanks anyway," you say, opening to door to the cell. "I'll see you around, Prisoner Vantas.”

You lock the door behind you.

You’ll read the messages later.

Right now, you have an impending hot date with a shitty detective novel, and the respite platform in your hive.


	7. headpiece filled with straw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and it just keeps getting more interesting from here on out  
> as a wise sage once remarked, "it keeps happening"

Once you get back to your hive, the first thing you do, undignified as it may be, is go up to the roof of your communal hivestem, feed Pyralspite, and cry into one of her leathery wings for a good half hour. You're not old enough to take on this case. You're not smart enough. When you talked to the auxiliatrix, the heavily injured auxiliatrix, her words left you so turned around that you walked into the oliveblood’s cell without thinking properly and almost got yourself culled.

Then, after that, Kurloz had to make sure you ate and slept like a normal troll because apparently you can’t even be trusted to do that much. And, moreover, if Aquila’s concerns have any bearing in reality, all he’s doing is using you because it would be most convenient for all involved, and isn’t even pale for you in the first place.

Then came the interview with the irreverent goldblood who would sooner die than spend the rest of his life in the helmsblock. If he was so concerned about that, why’d he join Kankri’s movement in the first place?

Your ex-instructor, the one who reminded you of Kankri, the one whom you respected heavily, Elder Zhaiye Sophia, some of her words float up to you. Like she wasn’t culled when you were fourteen, like you’d just been to one of her lectures last night.

_Many would argue that it is better to die for freedom than to live in captivity._

Obviously there was context for this sentence that made it seem far less seditious and anti-empire than it did, but the fact remains. She said it. She got culled under “regrettable and accidental circumstances” maybe two sweeps later.

You also remember reading up on the helmsblock and helmsmen for a case involving two ship captains laying claim to the same helmsman. Not the most comforting reading in the world. If you were the goldblood, you think you’d rather be executed by firing squad than become a battery.

Kurloz would point out that he’s guilty of high treason, and he is, but what’s it Kankri said? If the law is unjust, is it really wrong to point that out? It’s certainly still treason, law is law, but if the law is unjust? If the law is unjust?

Do you want to be party to unjust legislation? Is that why you decided to attend the Imperial Academy of Law in the first place?

You don’t personally think the law is necessarily unjust - it’s part and parcel of the hemospectrum? How can biology be unjust? - ** _(unless it is misused)_** \- but what if?

(Ten dead auxiliatrices.

Ten dead auxiliatrices.

_Ten dead auxiliatrices._

_Latula, we need to make this disappear. We need to make the heretics disappear. And you, you have never done wrong by me.)_

Your healing head injury aches something fierce.

You sorely wish you had Aquila around to _“what-if”_ with you. Secret follower of the signless mutant that she sounds like she might have become, she’d probably have a field day knowing something finally cracked your faith in the system.

Then there’s the mutant himself. How he knew your name. Seemed to know more about you than you did. Sure, he was evaluated to be psychotic and delusional, but you’ve met psychotic trolls before. Contrary to the file, he didn’t seem like them.

There was something in his bearings, and his manner of speaking, that made you wanted to listen. That almost made you want to believe him.

Not like chucklevoodos, either. Not mental manipulation of that caliber or anything of the sort. You know what chucklevoodos feel like.

Once, one of Kurloz’s subjuggulator subordinates decided to see what would happen if she used them on you. After Kurloz found about it, he quietly snapped her neck.

Then, he walked up to you, put his hand on your shoulder - ever so gently, even though his hands were gigantic, gigantic hands that had just culled a troll as easily a you could snap a twig - and asked, “you okay motherfucker? Ain’t nothin’ wrong if you ain’t.”

In the aftermath, as you bawled your eyes out, and rocked back and forth - someone had _invaded_ your _mind_ \- he shoosh papped you until all you did was sit there with a bewildered expression on your face. You shooshed him right back until he calmed down as well, because he was ready to cull every single troll who watched and did nothing to stop her.

And once you’d rendered him rational again, papping him and being terrified you’d be unable to subdue him, you finally yelled at him to stop trying to murder everyone, because it wouldn’t solve any problems, shouting so loudly that your voice cracked. For what it's worth, it worked. That brought him back.

After that, you sort of slid down one of the temple walls, to a sitting position, weary beyond exhaustion, verging on burnout.

Sort of like how you feel right now.

You're a brilliant neophyte, but you're in over your head.

_Who wouldn’t be, honestly?_

And you’re nineteen sweeps old, still crying on her lusus like some kind of injured wiggler.

For her part, Pyralspite nudges you with her massive snout, blows a plume of flame into the air above your head, and tucks you closer. So you stay with her like that for a while, until you feel calmer.

Tomorrow night, you need to interview all four of those trolls again. And at some point in the interim, you need to read the messages the signless wrote to his friends, make sure they’re alright to pass on. Maybe even show them to Kurloz. Definitely show them to Kurloz, run everything by him. He'll know what to do.

It’ll be okay. You’ll make it okay. You always do.

Once you return to your hive proper, you dig the bottle of Zossma's soporifics out of a cabinet in your nutritionblock. You need a fucking drink.

Later, you reflect, that this was yet another one of your awful ideas.  
  
Latula Pyrope, you are drunk. Not even drunk. You are, in fact, so incredibly wasted, that you might have in fact drunk yourself sober.

Okay, that idea is even less likely than the idea of you being functional in less than twenty hours, but nevertheless, you don't think you'd contemplated consuming this much strong ethanol-based soporific since you found out you had gotten accepted into the Academy of Law.  
  
As it happened, as soon as you got back down to your living quarters from being comforted by your lusus, you’d dropped your skateboard in front of the door, found the bottle of overproof spirits that by Zossma kept around, and poured yourself a glass.  
  
And not into any piddling teacup either.  
  
Then, you tried to drink it, at which point your eyes all but shriveled in their sockets. So you cut it down with orange juice, and drank… maybe a third of what you poured out.  
  
But then you got distracted by the fact that you couldn’t see straight, so you sent a message to Zossma’s comm. You think she’ll get it eventually, and probably giggle her oliveblooded ass off at the fact that you have done the very thing you keep giving her shit for doing.  
  
Anyways, back to uh, reading.

Yeah, _reading._  
  
You’re not gonna get near that first three paragraph message thing the mutant wrote yet, ‘cause you don’t give a fuck, and also, you still can’t see completely straight. You’re already half blind. You’ll be surprised if you can read anything.  
  
Besides, he said the other message was for you, anyhow.

Your eyes only. Some kind of rad message only you have the mental fortitude to comprehend, or whatever the fuck.  
  
Might as well get one that over with, first.  
  
The renowned and exceedingly loquacious beshackled taintchafing hemoequality-espousing philosopher jackass has written… a list. Just what you thought aforementioned piece of paper would contain, while he was writing it in his cell.  
  
What, is this a list of shit wrong with Alternia or something? If you were gonna write a list of things wrong with Alternia, it’d be way fucking longer than this. It would, in fact, be an actual novel.  
  
The Comprehensive List Of Everything Wrong With Alternia, Volume One, Chapter One: Kurloz Makara. Except not really. Okay, maybe. You’re not sure.

The Empress is wronger, for the record. And this drink? Also something wrong with Alternia.

How does Zossma drink this on a regular basis?  
  
Still, you don’t need a fucking mutant to tell you that things on Alternia are messed up.

You might have even punched Kankri earlier, but you’re not even mad at him. You don’t know who you’re mad at. You’re not even that mad at Kurloz and he’s the one who gave you this fucking case.  
  
You’re just mad.  
  
You’re just very hammered.  
  
Anyway, everything is fucked. Will everything ever be unfucked? Who knows?

Not you, that’s for sure, since you’re in the middle of it.  
  
Some ardent follower of the artist formerly and currently known as the exceedingly loquacious beshackled taintchafing philosopher jackass is probably gonna shoot your ass down in front of the Academy, because you got sucked into the trial of the century, and it’d be way harder to frag the trolls actually responsible for this shit.  
  
Neither the Empress nor Kurloz are as accessible as you are. Fuck your entire short life.  
  
You’d just go and resign from this case, but you’re pretty sure it’d be career suicide. So your current choices are career suicide, or actual suicide via pissy lowblood. You have all the luck in this life. All of it.  
  
Back to this list.  
  
You squint until you can sort of read it.  
  
He’s written down a bunch of names. Twelve, to be exact. What the fuck is this even supposed to mean? Maybe it will make some great windfall of sense once you read the names, but you are not counting on it, because a grand total of sweet fuck all has made sense ever since you took on this case.  
  
_“Damara Megido - rust, f - Witch of Time_  
_Rufioh Nitram - bronze, m - Rogue of Breath_  
_Mituna Captor - gold, m  - Heir of Doom_  
_Kankri Vantas - candy-red, m - Seer of Blood_  
_Meulin Leijon - olive, f - Mage of Heart_  
_Porrim Maryam - jade, f - Maid of Space_  
_Latula Pyrope - teal, f - Knight of Mind_  
_Aranea Serket - cobalt, f - Sylph of Light_  
_Horuss Zahhak - indigo, m - Page of Void_  
_Kurloz Makara - purple, m - Prince of Rage_  
_Cronus Ampora - violet, m - Bard of Hope_  
_Meenah Peixes - tyrian, f - Thief of Life”_  
  
What is this, a confession? A list of his fucking collaborators? At least three of his collaborators are there.  
  
But why is your name on this list? And why is Kurloz’s name on this list? And Horuss Zahhak? That’s Executor Darkleer. If he’s colluding with Kankri, you truly have drunk yourself into some kind of alternate world.

Who are the other trolls on this list, though? The colors? Well, those at least look like they correspond to hemospectrum. But the titles? What does any of that mean?  
  
Are these things in code? Are they part of an anagram of some sort? Is he just fucking with you? Is the universe just fucking with you? It wouldn’t surprise you, honestly.  
  
What does the signless mutant know that you do not? What does he think he knows? You’d like to know. Someone might as well know something, because you sure as fuck don’t know nearly as much as you like to think.  
  
Hold on. There’s a message written underneath the names.  
  
“Kankri, are you incapable of shutting the fuck up?” you ask the empty air.

You wish you could interview him again. Then you'd ask him what the fuck is going on.

In fact, that's just what you're doing tomorrow night, while you’re hungover enough to still be this angry. You continue reading his little message.  
  
_“Perhaps this list will convince you of what I said, once you finally understand it, if you ever understand it, if you don’t dismiss this as the ravings of a crazy troll. I would not fault you for doing so._  
  
_Once, though, we trolls were the twelve, made to play a game that could have ensured in the creation of a new, better universe. However, we were young, and we let our drama get in the way of fulfilling our objectives. We started playing this game at the age of six sweeps, and by the age of nine, had exhausted our options, to the point where winning was impossible._

_At that point, the only choice we had left was a hard reset of sorts, called the Scratch. A way of shaking things up to make outcomes more favorable._

_This world, this universe, this is what resulted._  
  
_One day, Latula, I hope you get what I am talking about._

_You were always one of the smartest trolls I knew, even when we failed. And we failed in every way we could possibly fail. I’m sorry we thought our actions would make things better._

_We Scratched everything up, and this is the hand we were dealt in recompense. Is that our punishment? Is that payback for the fucked up things we twelve did to each other back then, in the game? Maybe you can figure it out after I’m gone. I’ve never been able to. I don’t think I ever will._

_\- KV”_  
  
What fucking even?  
  
You then take a straight shot of Zossma’s special post-work liquor, which you think you may in fact be shitfaced enough to consume straight. Nope. It's still awful.  
  
You’re pretty sure it's fucking paint thinner disguised as soporifics.  
  
You take another look at the message.  
  
Unsurprisingly absolutely nothing about it makes one iota of sense.  
  
Who’s the bigger headcase, you wonder, already knowing the answer: the one with freaky visions and delusions of alternate universes, or the troll who thinks anything the headcase states will be in the least bit comprehensible?

But speaking of incoherence, when Zossma comes by to check on you - something in your message must have alarmed her for her to leave work just for this - she rolls her eyes colossally at you. You tell her to fuck off.

She picks the bottle up from off the floor, where it lies next to you and the note, which has been partially crumpled from being clenched in your fist, and takes a long swig.

“Yeah, I’ll fuck off after you sober up, Latula,” she says, half carrying you, and half helping you stumble into your recuperacoon. “I knew this case was a bad idea. Just fucking look at you.”

“He needs my help. Gotta help him. Kurloz can’t do this alone,”

“And you can?” she demands. “We’ll talk later. For now, just sleep it off. Mediculler’s orders.”

“Fuck you.”

“Right back at you, Latula.”

Once you hit the slime, though, you pass out for a while.

* * *

 

And then you’re sitting in someone’s hive, surrounded by all kinds of electronic contraptions. The girl in the hive, who appears to be its sole occupant, wears a teal, red, and black bodysuit. She’s also got on a pair of red square lens glasses that could be the twin of the ones you wear, except for the difference in lens shape.

You look around, and there’s a skateboard next to one of the electronic contraptions.

You’re sober now. A quick test of your faculties tells you this. The girl’s several sweeps your junior, with her hair pulled back in a tie similar to the one you kept it in when it was long. In fact, she’s a dead ringer for the troll you looked like several sweeps ago, down to that half-smile you always wear when you know something your opponent doesn’t.

“Where am I?” is the first thing you want to know.

“My hive, Latula. Pretty rad place, gotta admit. Got video games out the ass and everything.”

Her desk is littered with energy grubs.

You don’t know why you find this so funny, but you do.

“What am I doing here, exactly?” you ask.

She shrugs.

“Guess you needed somewhere to think for a while, girl. Or you have really weird dreams when you drink too much. Few times I had soporifics and got into my recuperacoon, you wouldn’t believe the shit I saw while I was out,” she says. “We’re similar in that respect.”

It’s true. You always have had weird dreams after imbibing excessive amounts of certain kinds of soporifics. Something to do with the mixture of ethanol in your system and sopor around you always put you in the weirdest fucking state while you were asleep.

You remember the note. The alternate universe. The list of names. The list of appellations.

_We exist but we are different. And here, we play a game. And we die at the age of nine._

“Are you me?” you ask.

“I’m pretty sure I’m myself,” she says, sounding almost amused about it. “I could be you, I guess. That would explain the resemblances. So this really what I'd look like if I got older?”

“You know what I mean,” you say. “Because if you are me, if that alternate universe thing Kankri was going on about is actually…. real, then… then he’s not delusional, then there really was a Beforus!”

A world where the hemospectrum didn’t basically proscribe your caste at birth, where things were softer. A kind world where you didn’t have to fight for everything, where you wouldn't have nearly been culled for your disability, had you not proven yourself worthy of the Imperial Academy, and had a few highblood friends probably pulling strings.

Tears spring to your eyes again.

“Kankri has a thing for saying a lot of shit, to be fair,” the entity you have decided to think of as not-Latula says. “Not all of it necessarily true. Kinda hard to listen to him sometimes.”

Yeah, no shit.

“You’re telling me. But why won’t you be straight with me? You’re evading.”

Not-Latula snorts.

“Because this is something you have to decide for yourself. Trolls keep telling you that they trust you’ll do the right thing: Kankri, Kurloz, _etcetera, etcetera_ ,” she starts out. “You have to decide what that right thing is, though. Where you want to go from here. Who’s speaking the truth and who’s talking out of their wastechute, if anyone. And then once you figure that out, figure what you want to do about it.”

The two of you shoot the shit for a while, in a way you haven’t shot the shit with anyone in perigees. You lie down on the floor of her hive, and don’t say much, except when you complain about something having to do with this case, and she replies with something reassuring, but vague. Still, it’s better than nothing.

“Can you answer a question?” you ask.

Not-Latula gives that inscrutable smile again. Does it really look that annoying and smug when _you_ do it?

“Only one way to find out.”

You feel like a wiggler asking about 12th Perigee’s Eve drone-elves really delivering gifts to lusii to be given to their charges, before you even open your mouth, but you do, nevertheless.

“Is Beforus real?” you ask. “Was that part of what Kankri said true?”

Not-Latula looks thoughtful for a long time, and for a second, you think you’re going to get a legitimate answer.

“It’s about as real as you think it is,” she says.

“You understand why I ask, of course," you press. “I just want to know, so I can do the right thing.”

For that, Not-Latula looks well and truly sad.

Sad and taken slightly off guard.

“Don’t we all?” she asks.

And before you wake up, you think you hear her ask, _“didn’t we all?”_

* * *

You awaken feeling like you’ve been hit by a communal transportation device, to a pounding headache and the dulcet tones of your kismesis having it out with Kurloz, probably using your own comm to do so.

“Do you have any idea how stressed out she is about this? Do you even care? Or are you just trying to save your ass at any cost? Because I will not let Latula be used! I don’t give a shit if you are the Grand Highblood!”

“How dare you motherfuckin insinuate that I am trying to use--!”

“She almost died, and you let her go back to work! What kind of shit moirail are y--?”

Still tacky with sopor and wearing nothing but a t-shirt, you walk into your living room, clearing your throat loudly to apprise them as to your presence.

Zossma stops talking, and then Kurloz does. You gesture at Zossma to give you the comm. She does.

“Kurloz, I apologize for anything Zossma might have said,” you say. “Even if she doesn’t. I’ll be around to round off my interviews in a few hours. We can talk then, because there is something I need to talk to you about.”

Zossma looks like she’s been made to swallow orange juice bereft of ethanol-based soporifics. You end the call, and then turn to her.

“I am stressed out beyond belief,” you confess to her. “This case is draining me in ways I don’t even want to talk about.”

“Exactly what I was trying to tell--”

“However, yelling at Kurloz is not going to make me less stressed out. It’s just going to make everything worse in terms of how I’m feeling. I need some time to think,” you say.

“You always need time to think.”

You pull her into a faintly annoyed kiss, and decide to be straight with her when you let go.

“You really pissed me off with what you did, but I’m willing to set that aside.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she says, sarcastically.

You recall that note. The research you’d been tentatively turning over in your head before you had to get Kurloz and Zossma to stop shouting at each other. And the dream. That dream. Sure, Not-Latula didn’t know anything you didn’t already know, but…

That’s why you need to think.

And, Zossma… shit. She might actually be able to help you in your research.

“Also, I’m going to need your assistance later,” you add.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she repeats, one eyebrow quirked. “What now?”

“I’m going to need access to birth and death records that I know you have as a mediculler, that I do not as a legislacerator, but I cannot be caught accessing them. Can you help me out?”

At this, Zossma leans against the adjacent wall and looks contemplative. Then, she laughs for a full ten seconds.

“You have a plan, don’t you, you crazy bitch? Something you’re not telling chucklefuck?” she asks. “Another one. Already. Just got out of the recuperacoon, hungover as shit - the Mother knows you certainly drank enough - and you’re already thinking.”

That last thing is for sure. You are never consuming soporifics again.

“Sort of a plan. The beginnings of one. I need to know a few things. I need to read up on things. Can you help?”

Zossma gives you an utterly deranged grin.

“Definitely. I love the danger of getting myself into huge trouble just for you. I want a full explanation later, and I expect it to be the most glorious tale ever told.”

She flips you off, but you can tell that she’s in. She even insists that she is. You despise this lovely woman.

“And thank you for keeping an eye on me yesterday,” you add.

She shrugs.

“No big deal Latula. You would have done the same for me. You _have_ done the same for me.”

She sets down a huge glass of water, and a smaller glass of something before you, insisting that they’re hangover remedies that help her all the time. Of all trolls, she’d know what works. You decide to take the risk.

You gulp down the water, and then chance drinking the contents of the other glass. Tastes like tomato juice and...  more soporifics.

You make your usual _“I cannot fucking believe this shit”_ sound.

“Let me get this straight,” you say.

“Yeah?”

“You’re giving me more ethanol based soporifics as a hangover cure.”

“Just a little bit. I mean, it works for me. I only ever drink these when I don’t have to be at work for a few hours. Otherwise I stick to the water.”

You finish your drinks, and pour yourself another glass of water. You must have about four glasses before you start to feel like a real troll again, your headache beginning to recede.

“Zossma, you _fucking astound_ me.”

She takes an exaggerated bow.

“Why, thank you.”

You think of the note again. The note. The dream.

You need to talk to Kurloz.

You need to talk to those prisoners again.

And you need Zossma to get you access to those files.

You’re going to have to make your own decisions on what the truth are, what right and wrong are - you and no one else, by yourself and for yourself, for better or worse.

This is uncharted territory. This is not any textbook.

This is where you think for yourself, and not just when and because other trolls tell you to.

As always, you’re going to need to read up on a few things. And what you can’t glean just from reading, well, you’ll have to rely on your intuition.  _Your_ intuition.

It’ll be enough, you tell yourself. It will have to be enough.

You wonder if Elder Sophia would be proud of you, could she see you now.  
  
For the first time in a while, you hope she would.


End file.
